A decade after the last movie, more than thirty years after the last movie people actually liked, and a numbing amount of prerelease hype, a new Star Wars movie has hit theaters. For once, the wait was worth it.  The Force Awakens is an unqualified triumph and one of the best movies of the year.

Taking place thirty years after Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens opens with the stormtrooper of the First Order, which has replaced the Empire, massacring a small village on a desert planet.  It highlights the two central thrusts of the movie.  The first is the familiar.  During this scene, important information is stashed in a droid who is sent away to get help, just like at the start of Star Wars.  It also shows a stormtrooper react to the atrocities he and his allies commit.  That is what The Force Awakens does.  It frequently and intentionally alludes to or straight out copies scenes from the original trilogy, but combines it with fresh new character and concepts.

It really shines in bringing new heroes to the series.  Rey is this trilogy’s desert prodigy child, following in the footsteps of Anakin and Luke.  She is immediately charming and compelling.  Unlike Luke and his yearning for adventure and excitement, Rey has no desire to leave her home, not until the parents that abandoned her there come back to get her.  As she gets caught up in greater struggles than she knows, she becomes all the more interesting.  Then there is Fin, the one time stormtrooper who is rebelling against his training.  He is awkward and jumpy and ultimately relatable.  The third member of the triumvirate is Poe, a hotshot pilot who is all charm and confidence.  In some ways the three are simply a rearranging of the trio of Luke, Han and Leia, but they all feel fresh and interesting.  Taking the place of Darth Vader, both and the villain and literally in character, is Kylo Ren, a failed Jedi student who consciously apes the famous bad guy.  This deliberate mixture of old and new occasionally leans a little to hard on the old.  As much fun as it is to see Han, Chewie, and the Falcon, the stronger parts of the film are the parts that are moving forward, not looking back. In this movie, Han is passing the baton, not taking center stage.

The Force Awakens brings back a sense of momentum and adventure to the series.  It is a propulsive film, sometimes to its own detriment.  At all times the movie feels the need to keep the action up.  That is a big improvement over the flat dialogue and a turgid romance of the prequels, but it has its own drawback.  The movie never takes the time to let the character breathe; there are few scenes like Luke at home with his Aunt and Uncle or his first training on the Falcon.  Even when they are there, they feel truncated.  That is less a fault of this movie and more a commentary on the current state of blockbuster movies.

If there is one thing I do not like about The Force Awakens, it is the narrative that has sprung up around it, that the fans have come to fix what Lucas put wrong. The prequels, and to a lesser extent the special editions, have long been a target for supremely nerdy hate.  I am not going to try to defend them, other than to say that they are in no way bad enough to deserve such vocal hate, but this attitude about them and their relationship to TFA is disappointing.  The idea that TFA is what the prequels should have been, but George Lucas was unable to see it rings false.  For all that TFA does well, it highlights the prequels strengths.  Those movies, for all their faults, had a sense of newness about them.  They weren’t the same hero’s journey of the originals, but a broken form of that.  The special effects, which have not aged well, were on the cutting edge.  The Force Awakens lacks that feeling of newness. There is a sense of a return, that things are back they way they should be, but I perversely yearn for those unknown territories.

Still, Star Wars The Force Awakens is a triumph.  It may hew a little too close to its predecessors, with a few too many direct references, but otherwise it is astounding.  While the old favorites are used as a selling point, the new blood is what is going to keep me coming back.  Rey, Fin and Poe are characters I can’t wait to learn more about.  Kylo Ren, for all his intentional aping of Darth Vader, is an original villain, more pathetic and pitiable than scary.  He is still highly dangerous, but he feels more like a teenager throwing a tantrum and less like a powerful force of evil.  Star Wars The Force Awakens lives up to the legacy of its predecessors.  It is a terrific continuation of the saga that is hopefully one glance backwards before moving on to the new.

The Rocky movie series has already undergone several metamorphoses.  It started as a relatively grounded movie about a down on his luck boxer before morphing into that same boxer’s larger than life tales as the World Champion and then cratering into whatever the hell Rocky V was supposed to be and finally becoming the mournful dirge of Rocky Balboa, with its ruminations on loss and life.   All of the movies, save V, have something to offer.  And presented over the Creed represents in some ways the biggest departure for the series, but is actually more like the original than any film that followed it. The biggest change with Creed is right in the title.  This is not a movie about Rocky Balboa, as all the previous films have been, but a movie with Rocky Balboa.  It uses the history and characters of the series as its structure, but it turns the whole thing into a cycle.

At the risk of spoiling the whole thing, Creed is built on a more than similar framework to Rocky. For large parts it is beat for beat identical, the biggest difference being that starting situations of the two title characters. Adonis grew up with his father’s wife, notable not his mom, in relative luxury instead of Rocky’s rather impoverished roots. Still, the story hits a lot of the same beats, though it does it with style and emotion. It is a sports movie, viewers will know the formula, but Creed executes it nearly perfectly.

It works because it nails the psychology of is characters. Adonis feels like something of an imposter, growing up in the shadow of a father he never met. His forays into boxing are both about proving that he belongs and a way to connect with that father. Rocky, meanwhile, has all but given up. He is still the charming guy he has been for six movies, but his friends are all gone and even his son has moved away. He is an old man that doesn’t feel he has a lot to live for.

Creed works on its own merit. Knowing who Rocky is previously isn’t necessary. There is little here that isn’t explained in the film itself. However, the previous six Rocky movies work form a lot of context that helps speed things along. Knowing who Adrian was isn’t necessary, the movie makes it clear she is Rocky’s deceased wife, but having watched her in previous Rocky movies makes the scene of Rocky sitting in the cemetery reading the paper to her grave all the more effecting. It is very satisfying to see Rocky move on from the ring and fully become Mick. He is now the one telling the youngster that women weaken legs. Everything has come full circle.

If there is one flaw to this movie, other than its predictability, it is that they again used a real boxer for Creed’s eventual opponent. It is not that Tony Bellow did a bad job as desperate champion Ricky Conlan, but the filmmakers were wise enough not to rely on his performance outside of boxing. Instead, the always delightful Graham McTavish does most of the work for the opposite corner. A big part of the appeal of Rocky was the in how appealing Creed was as an opponent. Carl Weathers was a perfectly charming Ali-type champion for the lower key Rocky to work against. Bellow doesn’t really provide that. Also, by having a real boxer as the opponent creates a visual mismatch with them in the ring. Michael B Jordan as Adonis has very showy muscles, Bellow doesn’t. It is a little distracting.

The formula that produced the first Rocky is a good one, and Creed recreates it almost perfectly. There are just enough new touches to keep things interesting, even if they never stop being predictable. You may know the beats as the come, but when they are hit with as much skill as they are here you can’t help but be moved. Creed is an excellent movie, one that stands with the first Rocky in the pantheon of great sports movies.

****1/2